Orthodox History

The Nine Years That Almost Destroyed the Orthodox Church: 1921

Here are links to the previous four articles in this series on the global Orthodox crisis of 1917-25: 1917191819191920 1921 In February 1921, the Red Army invaded Georgia, capturing Tbilisi and then the rest of the country. The communists declared the “Georgian Soviet Socialist Republic” and began a mass persecution...

The Nine Years That Almost Destroyed the Orthodox Church: 1920

Here are links to the previous three articles in this series on the global Orthodox crisis of 1917-25: 1917 1918 1919 1920 In January 1920, the Ecumenical Patriarchate issued an encyclical “Unto the Churches of Christ everywhere,” calling for the “rapprochement between the various Christian Churches” and the establishment of...

The Nine Years That Almost Destroyed the Orthodox Church: 1919

This article is the third in a series on the crisis that engulfed Orthodoxy in the period from 1917 to 1925. Previously, I covered the years 1917 and 1918. Today, we're moving on to 1919, a year defined by Europe's transition to a new order following World War I, as...

The Nine Years That Almost Destroyed the Orthodox Church: 1918

In my previous article, I began a series on the the chaotic nine-year stretch from 1917 to 1925 -- an era that nearly destroyed the Orthodox Church, and produced the global Orthodox context in which we live today. Today we turn the page to 1918, when things go from bad...

The Nine Years That Almost Destroyed the Orthodox Church: 1917

Orthodoxy is currently facing a global crisis of unity. While we might be tempted to despair of the well-being of the Church, it is helpful to remember that, not so long ago, Orthodoxy faced a series of threats that were -- in my view -- even more threatening than the...

The Pan-Orthodox Council of 1998

Beginning in the post-Communist era in the early 1990s, a faction of schismatics emerged in Bulgaria, breaking away from the canonical Bulgarian Orthodox Church. These schismatics -- known as the "Alternative Synod" -- elected their own Patriarch in 1996, with the backing of the Bulgarian government. Under immense pressure, the...

Was Crete really the first “Pan-Orthodox Council” in centuries?

In the run-up to what was hoped to be a Great and Holy Council in 2016, many church leaders and commentators emphasized that this was a monumental event, the first time in X years that representatives from all of the world's Orthodox Churches had met in a council. "X years"...

The Legacy of Father Nicola Yanney

What follows is the text I used for a talk on Fr. Nicola Yanney on October 28, 2018, at a pilgrimage in Kearney, Nebraska, commemorating the 100th anniversary of his repose. Audio and video recordings were made of the talk, and those should be available at some point. I think...

Patriarch Athenagoras Clearly States How Autocephaly Must Be Granted

Editor's note: On Friday, Orthodox History published a 1970 letter by Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras in response to the Moscow Patriarchate's decision to grant autocephaly to the "Orthodox Church in America." After posting the letter, we received the following article by “Petrus Antiochenus.” Today, the Ecumenical Patriarchate is on the...

1970 Letter from Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras on Autocephaly

Editor's note: In 1970, the Patriarchate of Moscow issued a Tomos of Autocephaly to its former archdiocese in North America, which was commonly known as the "Russian Metropolia" and is now the "Orthodox Church in America." Ecumenical Patriarch Athenagoras protested against this act in multiple letters to the leaders of the...